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Sunday, November 27, 2016

More Than One in Three Americans Are Prediabetic │ Thoughts on Seasonal Affective Disorder │ Flu Avoidance Tips

I did not surpass midnight by too much before getting to bed last night ─ I had some plans for Sunday.

Upon entering into my first break in solid sleep, I took the opportunity to visit the bathroom ─ it was around 3:45 a.m. I had quite a thirst from the four slices of pizza that had constituted my evening's supper prior to my evening's drinks.

But upon returning to bed, I was soon afflicted with a clogged nasal passageway ─ I tried to relax and fall asleep, but breathing was too restricted.

By 5:45 a.m. I had given up and decided to rise and work on the post I have in draft at one of my six hosted websites.

I heard my youngest step-son Pote and his girlfriend soon get up, and he probably escorted her off to catch a bus so she could go to work. He was back after about 15 minutes.

His older brother Tho had taken the car and was spending the night at his girlfriend's home, I am assuming.

Pote was soon engaging me about the slowness of the Internet, so I let him know that I was uploading his mother's Thailand photos to my secondary Google+ account. It was probably a brief video of about six seconds that was the biggest drag on resources, for it had just finished uploading immediately prior to his visit here to me upstairs where I keep my computer.

And then the next thing I knew, he was here again and telling me that he was trying to set up an online account with a Shaw technician so that Pote could view our Internet status ─ and he said that the technician needed to deal with me for security reasons, since the billing account is of course not in Pote's name.

I then explained that I have always avoided bringing on Shaw's scrutiny ever since discovering six or so years ago that ─ according to a Shaw technician ─ we were using an amount of data that was surprising to the guy.

It wasn't too surprising to me, for I was online about a dozen hours a day, and so were my step-sons.

And I further explained that I would be little more use than he was in dealing with his technician, for the billing is not in my name, either ─ it is in my younger brother Mark's name.

We settled the matter by retrieving the latest Shaw bill, and I reckon Pote was able to provide the correct accounting information from it.

Anyway, Pote got the online account he wanted, and saw for himself that we always exceed the amount of data we are set up to be using ─ in fact, October was more than double what our account is supposed to allow.

But we never get charged for the overuse ─ and I do not want that to change. Pote did some research, and saw the wisdom of this, for Telus (the other major local provider) does indeed soak its users for overuse of their data allowance.

Interestingly, Pote said that he tested our bandwidth, and although we do not quite have the claimed download speed we should have, our upload speed was supposedly not even 3% of what we are supposed to have.

All of the foregoing consumed a fair amount of time. As a consequence, I never quite performed 75% of what normally constitutes a full day's work on that post I was working on.

Mark was soon home from his girlfriend Bev's residence where he had spent last night.

I was still busy uploading my wife Jack's Thailand photos from her recent trip ─ I had begun the task yesterday, and I did not want to stop the project until they were all uploaded. As it was to turn out, there were 1,089 items in all going into the album that I had set up.

I found it of note that the first five photos she took were of a gang of kids:

The photos were probably taken in Nong Soong, Jack's family 'village' very near to Udon Thani. The pictures are time-stamped as having been taken on October 27 (2016), but I don't know how accurate the camera's settings are. Besides, Thailand is more than half-a-day ahead of us here, so even if the date was correct for this part of Canada, it would have been into the following day in Thailand.

By the time I was done with the uploads, it was late into the forenoon. Mark had just gone to his room for a nap, I figured; so I did the same a little ahead of noon.

Pote had left for work in a downpour earlier, so I locked the front door before seeking my bed.

When I fell into a nap and then came out of it, I checked the time and saw that the noon-hour was nearly expired.

I rose, and was a little shocked to discover that not only had Mark left his bedroom, but he was not even home.

I had lost much of my day. And since the only justification I could allow myself for not exercising at all was to get out and make the beer hike I forsook late this past week, I readied to do just that after eating the three remaining slices of pizza from last evening.

At one point, I heard Tho driving into the open carport. He came into the house, but was not here for too long, for I soon heard him driving away again.

Then just a few minutes later, I heard someone come into the house as I continued readying myself for my venture.

I managed to catch a glimpse of Pote's girlfriend passing by the bottom of the stairway that connects to the upper floor where I was.

All I could wonder was if she now has been given the right by him to just come here when she has finished work, and wait in the boys' den area for him when he eventually gets home once he, too, finishes work?

I wanted no communication with her ─ I was late enough.

So I had just set foot outside and locked the door behind me when I noticed that I had a text message from Pote timed as having arrived at 12:11 p.m. ─ I was in bed at that time seeking my nap:

Priyanka will come by and get her work uniform and get ready for her second job today! She should be there in like an hour and a half.

I responded at 2:05 p.m.:

I didn't see this earlier -- I was napping.Anyway, its now just after 2:00 pm and I'm on my way to the liquor store.

He did not respond.

So I carried on ─ and had mistakenly misread his message, believing that he had said that she was to show up in about half-an-hour, and not 1½ hours.

I was hiking to the government liquor store about two miles distant at 108th Avenue & King George Highway here in Whalley. It was 2:06 p.m. when I set off, and it was about 3:30 p.m. when I got back.

Of course, the front door was unlocked, since the girl has no key; and no one was home. All the lights were off.

I accept some responsibility for this turn of events, but Pote and his girlfriend have got to be more bloody coordinated than this.

As for my hike, it was raining a little, but not enough to dampen me. There was nothing of consequence to report, apart from coinciding at the traffic light at City Parkway & 104th Avenue (when still on my way for the beer) with a fairly rough-looking but talkative guy bearing a pack.

He was bound in the same direction, so we walked together until he made a right turn onto 105th Avenue.

He was loud, talking of how about 20 or so years ago he was on a flight to Ottawa or some such place, and in flying over the local mountains here in B.C., he was shocked to see that the forests appeared to have been decimated through logging.

He ventured that for the benefit of people driving the highways, a border of trees was left to give the illusion of there being vast forests. But he claimed that there were none over the areas he flew.

He then offered that logging practices have improved since then, and that there is some kind of a 20-year plan that staggers how tree-harvesting is carried on.

Anyway, I seem to have chosen the driest part of the day for my outing. The rain has been a little more intense since my return ─ the heavier bouts seem to come in waves.

╔╔╔╔╔╔╔╔╔╔╔╔╔╔╔╔╔╔╔╔╔

It seems to me that I have read in the past that prediabetes is not a legitimate medical condition ─ or maybe I am simply mis-remembering.

In the States, supposedly more than a third of the population is prediabetic ─ I wouldn't expect too many other countries to be much better off.

Yet a recent study claims that almost 50% of family physicians do not screen patients to determine if they might be prediabetic and thus at risk for development of not just actual diabetes, but also "vascular problems, kidney disease, and nerve and retinal damage."

If this concerns you at all, you can read a couple of reports about the study here:

I am very easy prey to depression, but it isn't because of something as simple as gloomy weather. Mine is brought on by things like crushing debt worries and what seem to me to be insurmountable marital and sexual problems.

And since I do not want to risk sinking myself into such a depression by writing of it, I am going to drop the subject right now.

😋😋😋😋😋😋😋

I realize that no matter how healthy a person might be, if sanitary or hygienic precautions are not vigilantly taken, exposure to a flu virus will quite likely result in infection.

But I am not a believer in getting a flu vaccination. To me, that is ludicrous.

I have not seen the CDC's recommendation on best practices for preventing the flu, but this short report speaks of them:

Six years ago, it was commonplace for the government and the 'Vaccine Industry' to be flogging influenza vaccinations, and doing their wickedest to scare us all into thinking that a deadly epidemic was about to be unleashed.

Can you believe that someone called a "flu expert" ─ Dr. Marc Siegel ─ was quoted as saying the following back then?:

The idea that you are not going to spread the flu by washing your hands has never been proven.

I must rush now to include this journal entry from 41 years ago when I was 26 years old, and living in a basement housekeeping unit in New Westminster.

The house I was renting the small unit in was located on Ninth Street at Third Avenue.

I had gone to bed at 7:00 p.m. the evening prior to this entry.

THURSDAY, November 27, 1975

I slept badly, and did not get up till nearly 3:30 a.m.

At 4:00 a.m. I left for my 12 laps, which I did very leisurely, and plan to so continue as I am too susceptible to a type of shin splint condition; the night was barely cold enough to cause frost; just after picking up my coat to leave, a fellow came jogging along the track. Bill dropped by around 10:00 a.m.; he brought me a beautiful Star Trek calendar for 1976, one which I planned to order by mail from the F&SF Book Co.; I paid Bill for it instead.He got himself the Tolkien calendar.I lied down from about 11:00 a.m.. - 1:00 p.m., both because I was cold and cause I wanted some extra sleep in case I chose to watch Space: 1999 tonight. I should have napped in the early eve as well; I broke a 30 day stretch by succumbing to Paula & Stephanie (Dec.); please let me win a lottery, any Power that may hear!

I will be watching TV, and so retire at 8:00 p.m.

I did my running at the New Westminster Secondary School track, and chose those early hours so as to have utmost privacy. But despite me getting there very early, another chap showed up just after I had finished.

It was my old friend William Alan Gill who later visited me at my room, bringing the calendars for me to appreciate. He lived in a bachelor suite three or four blocks from my room.

"Paula & Stephanie" were the featured pictorial in the December 1975 issue of Penthouse. I had abstained from 'self-indulgence' for a month prior to their seduction.